May Garden Update

I was up early this morning and took advantage of the cooler temperatures to take some more pictures of the garden. Houston has been blessed this year with a mild spring and which I think has really helped the plants have a great start.

We have bell peppers, poblanos and jalapenos coming in.

There are lots of green tomatoes, these ones are cherry tomatoes! I can’t wait until they’ve ripened.

I’ve already eaten two eggplant and I have a least four more coming in. We have some Black Beauties and a Japanese variety that are long and slender.

We’ve had lots of cucumbers.

The first yellow squash and zucchini also came in this week. The black berries look like they’ll be ready any day now, right now only these three are ready. About two weeks ago I also started getting lots of green beans. I’m hoping they’ll re-flower and I’ll get some more before it gets too hot.

I had two strawberries. That’s right had. Did I get to eat them, no. There was a raccoon visiting earlier this week and I witnessed him eat the two ripe ones! Rude I know. Hopefully I’ll actually get to eat this one and the others that are coming in.

Can you believe how tall everything is? It amazes me every time I go out to the garden. And to end with a picture of the sun rising through the trees because I thought it was lovely. I hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Vegetable Garden Update!

I finally got my act together and have my summer garden up and running and I’m very excited about it. Last year I was a little more on the ball and had early spring vegetables like broccoli and peas in the ground by February, but some how February came and went in a flash this year and getting the garden ready just didn’t happen.

Here’s what the garden looks like as of this morning. About a month ago Sean and I cleared the beds, which were very overgrown with weeds because we never had a hard freeze this winter. We ended up using a water and vinegar solution to spray some of the really tough stuff down, and after a few days the weeds had died enough for us to pull them up. I am also trying a new weed prevention method this year. I have lined all of the beds with newsprint paper, I had a plethora from college art classes, and then I’ve mulched on top of the paper. So far it seems to be helping a lot, and I can also see a big improvement in the moisture retention of the beds.

Here’s a picture of the last bed I did today. I layed down the damp paper and then put a layer of mulch on top. These are the green beans. I grew a small bed of them last year and they did really well, plus they also froze very well, so I decided to plant a whole large bed of them this year.

Here are the two yellow crook neck squash.

In this bed we have a variety of peppers at one end and eggplant at the other.

Here are the cucumbers and zucchini which have lots of flowers on them already!

This year I also decided to make a change and plant my tomatoes in the ground. I had been planting them in large pots, but during the hot Texas summer it was very hard to maintain a constant moisture. They already seem to be doing much better than in past years. Here’s one bed of three different types of tomatoes and basil, and I have another one next to it.

Just outside the garden, along the fence, we planted black berries last winter and it looks like we will have lots of berries pretty soon.

I also found this renegade today! Last year I planted poll beans and I found this guy growing on the fence across the garden from were I had originally grown them. I think I’ll just let him be for now and enjoy the beans.

I’m getting excited to cook and eat fresh veggies from the garden.